Flow Meter Kit - Small

Flow Meter Kit - Small

SEN-11183

Description:Replacement: None. We are no longer carrying this Flow Meter Kit in our catalog. This page is for reference only.

Atlas Scientific is on a mission to make high-quality sensors for environmental monitoring available to everyday hackers and makers. All of their kits are easy to calibrate and connect to your microcontroller-based project.

Sometimes in life you have to just go with the flow… and sometimes you have to meticulously measure the rate of said flow. For those latter situations, Atlas Scientific has put together the Small Flow Meter Kit. This kit includes everything you need to set up a lab-grade embedded flow meter system accurate to ± 1mL/min.

Along with a TurboFlow-22600 flow meter, capable of measuring rates from 800 ml/min to 7.6 LPM, the Small Flow Meter Kit also comes with a 178 micron stainless-steel mesh pre-filter to protect your meter from instrument-clogging sediment. Simply install the filter and flow meter in-line using threaded pipe-fittings then connect the extended flow meter cable to your embedded controller using the included RJ-11 breakout and FLO-30 flow meter circuit.

The FLO-30 flow meter circuit outputs simple comma separated values over RS-232. The output string is easily readable: 3 values ending with a carriage return. Each reading gives you the total liters, liters per minute and liters per hour. These meters are great for everything from hydroponic gardening to water conservation.

You need better definition of your application here - there’s not enough to go on. What pressure? 3" diameter, or length? What type of liquid? What material is your pressure vessel made of? Depending on the design of your application, it MAY be easier to detect integrity problems at low pressure than at system or even proof pressures. Also, is this a single test, or is it a production / acceptance test? I am a retired aerospace engineer, with extensive test equipment and fluid power design experience. I’d be glad to help, if it keeps my damaged brain busy….

I’ve got a similar need, and I’d be very curious to hear any suggestions you can come up with!
I’m trying to measure low flow rates (say, less than 1 mL/min to 30 ml/min) at atmospheric pressure (very very low pressure differential), with minimal disturbance of the flow. I’m hoping to find a flowmeter with a diameter 1 cm or greater, but diameter and flow sensitivity appear to be inversely proportional, so most of what I’ve seen is in the 1 mm range.

This is the best sensor I’ve found, and it appears to be possible to control with an Arduino:
http://www.sensirion.com/en/products/liquid-flow-sensors/components-for-oem-applications/lg-flow-sensor/

I haven’t found any other sensors that appear to reach such low flow rates (I’ve looked into ultrasonic, electromagnetic, and heat-pulse types). Any thoughts?

Turbine flowmeters typically have a 10:1 turdown accuracy. With good bearings and more precise machining, 50:1 is reasonably attainable. A high - priced RF pickoff can eliminate magnetic reluctance on the turbine, and get you to 100:1. Factors such as viscosity, density, and air entrainment (for liquids) also effect accuracy. Only a positive - displacement flowmeter is truly accurate, but with that comes pressure drop and cost issues. $130 is pretty reasonable for a turbine and conditioning circuitry.

All I want this thing to do is tell me how much beer is left in my keg. Inspired by the Sparkfun Tweeting Kegerator? You bet!

I’m having a bit of trouble getting the sensor to read a value. I can poll the board with serial commands fine. Troubleshooting LEDs for serial commands flashes correctly. However, when I plug the sensor in, with water flowing through the meter, I don’t get any reading…remains all zeros for the response for “R” command. The troubleshooting LED for each pulse of the meter does not flash either as if the sensor is not working… Any ideas?

Fixed. Found a few problems…I unsoldered the header pins which might have been the cause. Found out the sensor was working correctly by looking at the signal using a scope. Eventually tracked the problem down to the sensor pin on the board being shorted to ground. Cutting the trace from the 10K pullup resistor to the sensor pin on the board and soldering a tiny wire to the end of the resistor to the sensor wire did the trick. Also note if you’re not using the breakout board, like I am, double check the pin trace to make sure that each wire in the RJ11 connector is going to the right wire in your project. Found out the following color codes for the wires in the RJ11 connector: RED=VCC, Black=GND, Green=Signal.

Guys, 0 - VCC is not a valid RS-232 serial level. If you connected this to a proper RS-232 port, it would not work. Please correct this in the spec as it is misleading and some people would take it to mean you can connect it to a PC or something similar directly.

RS-232 specifies that the voltage must swing between a negative voltage and a positive voltage to represent logical 0’s and 1’s. The minimum swing normally accepted for this is from -5V to +5v with anything in between being ignored (i.e. 0V).

It only describes what the flow meters are made of, not what liquids they are compatible with. I supposed one could assume that if a material is compatible with a liquid, the meter is as well, but we all know what happens when we assume.

I bought a $9 flow meter from Seedstudio (name?) that only needed a couple resisters to work with the Arduino. It currently measures out the appropriate amount of water into the coffee pot each morning via a 12 digit keypad.
$130 seems a lot, but it must do a lot more?

Id be more concerned with foaming the hell out of your beer. I’m a homebrewer. For a good pour, you need very smooth tubing with very little interference to the flow. Putting this turbine-type meter in line with your dispensing system may foam your beer up terribly. Might not - but - I dunno, I’d worry about that.

I don’t think 1 ml is particularly accurate. Especially if the low end of the sensor is really 800ml/min. For 1/10th the cost you can get something 2.5 ml accuracy. http://www.adafruit.com/products/828

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